Islands - Return to the Sea

I really wanted to trash this record, to be totally cool in destroying indies second coming of Christ for 2008 (think Neon Bible last year), but I simply can’t. For an indie record, it’s distractingly well produced and every member (all 6 of ‘um) is insanely talented. Except for the lead singer, everybody here has been to music school. Nick, the lead guy, also said he wanted the guitar and drums to have “the perfect pop sound”, and I think they really have gotten it here. There’s a whole lot less of the silly genre jumping from Return to the Sea and it’s a whole lot more serious and well composed than The Unicorns, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These are really long, gorgeous pop songs. They’re going to be huge soon, so get on board now.

Sam Shalabi

All I know about Arabia is that their main export is horses and their public transportation relies entirely on upholstery. When it comes to music, I’m vaguely familiar with some YouTube videos. But no matter, this album wanks too far to be interesting and noodles too long to be noteworthy. If you somehow could compress the songs by 300%, it would be pretty interesting. As is, there aren’t any friendly ones at all, although some can be rewarding if you try really hard.

For instance, 10 is awesome. It’s free jazz, marching, a chorus of “blah blah”, etc. Like David Lynch as a jazz genie. 4 has some interesting parts and 6 is all but unlistenable – it’s like the excesses of Patti Smith stretched to 6 minutes without any of the stuff that made her great.

The Black Keys

The year was 2008 and Media Consultation INC resurrected the remains of 1960’s era Credence Clearwater Revival into robots. Their purpose? To sell concert tickets. Unfortunately, they were not weathermen. The first scheduled show, a historic, sold out crowd, was on an outdoor stage – and by all indications, it was going to rain. As the first drops hit, the CCRobots played on, completely oblivious to any human verbs like “to rain” or “to rust” or “to sell concert tickets.” They only knew how “to rock”. But as the first drops hit, something changed. They started to malfunction…

(7)…at first confusing their firmware as The Kinks 2.0, playing grungy, dirty, chord driven, pure rock ‘n roll…

(3)…then driving them into a frenzy, rocking harder, fiercer, almost menacingly, on the verge of destruction…

(9)...while a pan flute floats over the rust, growing…

(2)…but they push forth, they still don’t feel the rain, they push forth with dirty, grungy, Delta-blues overdriven rock ‘n roll…

(1)…moving slower, they still push forth, playing softer and softer till they are overtaken by an organ, playing them their funeral dirge..

(6)..and they move slower still, singing their last ballad, collapsing into the sound of electronic glitches, their robotic heart giving up the ghost.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Don’t go into this band expecting to be amazed, it takes time. They are young, they make young music – college based pop punk you’ve heard before. Some guitars, drums, songs about girls. But with them, it’s their incessant charm, their awareness that they really are writing songs about girls and they don’t care. It’s almost like Beat Happening, they have to hit you at a right time in your life to really get much out of them. You have to be open and ready, emotionally vulnerable, to ever let them affect you much. This is not introspective, personal music. Nor is it balls to the wall rock. It simply is. As for how it compares to Broom, it’s a lot cleaner, more mature, musically sophisticated, etc. Exactly as you’d expect from a band just signed to a major indie label.

7. The stand out track.

3. Harmonious acoustic number that’s smooth and easy

1. One of their more charming numbers. It has cowbell!

5. Perfect, slow build into a mellow, glowing rock out. Plus it features a totally psychotic scream towards the end.

Magnetic Fields - Distortion

“I want to make an album more Jesus and Mary Chain than Jesus and Mary Chain.” With these words by Stephen Merritt, Distortion is explained. No, this isn’t 69 Love Songs. No, it isn’t innovative. It’s an album of brutally witty pop songs slowed way, way down and slammed with a wall of droning distortion. Jesus and Mary Chain is a good idea, but Loveless is even closer. The problem is that it’s more of a personal experience. It’s not music to rock out to, or to cry to, or to even drive to (unless it’s a cold summer night and you’re feeling mellow). It might be makeout music, but it’s definitely headphone music. So, play - play often - but don’t expect it to give your show much energy.

2. One of the most upbeat. Female vocals; superb lyrics.
3. Plods along, but never is boring. Really, really mellow.. in a loud way.
10. Marvelous riff; best Merritt singing on the whole disc.
11. Another excellent female vox, “upbeat”, number.

Really, this is the kind of album where everyone has a different favorite. So if you like Magnetic Fields, especially their darker/mellower stuff, spin the dial and cross your fingers.

I Was Totally Destroying It

If you’re going to paint by numbers, go for Degas, or Rembrandt, or at the very least a stupid sailboat. You’re dooming yourself to failure if you go for the glitter ballerina with anal fissures on a purple moon. Also, try not to be color blind. I Was Totally Destroying It makes all these mistakes when they try to pop-punk paint by numbers. They also make the mistake of totally destroying their reputation. Maybe, maybe if you are a freshman in high school, you’re favorite band is AFI, and you have a penchant for methadone, this might be your album of the year. For the rest of us whose hobbies do not include, but are actually the exact opposite of, hammering rusty nails into our nose, this band is the worst kind of local. Generic, uninspiring, “listen to this my best friend did it and OMG I love it!” local. Think Straylight Run meets The Smoking Popes and nobody wins.

Best tracks are not available at this time.

footnote upon the construction of the masses:

some people are young and nothing
else and
some people are old and nothing
else
and some people are in between and
just in between.

and if the flies wore clothes on their
backs
and all the buildings burned in
golden fire,
if heaven shook like a belly
dancer
and all the atom bombs began to
cry,
some people would be young and nothing
else and
some people old and nothing
else,
and the rest would be the same
the rest would be the same.

the few who are different
are eliminated quickly enough
by the police, by their mothers, their
brothers, others; by
themselves.

all that's left is what you
see.

it's hard.


(by charles bukowski.)

a division by charles bukowski

I live in an old house where nothing
screams victory
reads history
where nothing
plants flowers

sometimes my clock falls
someitmes my sun is like a tank on fire

I do not ask
your armies
or
your kisses
or
your death
I have my
own

my hands have arms
my arms have shoulders
my shoulders have me
I have me
you have me when you can see me
but I don't like you
to see me

I do not like you to see that
I have eyes in my head
and can walk
and I do not want to

answer your questions
I do not want to
amuse you
I do not want you to
amuse me
or sicken me
or talk about
anything

I do not want to
love you

I do not want to
save you

I do not want your arms
I do not want your shoulders
I have me
you have you

let that
be.

the screw-game by charles bukowski

one of the terrible things is
really
being in bed
night after night
with a woman you no longer
want to screw.

they get old, they don't look very good
anymore - they even tend to
snore, lose
spirit.

so, in bed, you turn sometimes,
your foot touches hers -
god, awful! -
and the night is out there
beyond the curtains
sealing you together
in the
tomb.

and in the morning you go to the
bathroom, pass in the hall, talk,
say odd things; eggs fry, motors
start.

but sitting across
you have 2 strangers
jamming toast into mouths
burning the sullen haed and gut with
coffee.

in 10 million places in America
it is the same -
stale lives propped against each
other
and no place to
go.

you get in the car
and you drive to work
and there are more strangers there, most of them
wives and husbands of somebody
else, and besides the guillotine of work, they
flirt and joke and pinch, somethings tend to
work off a quick screw somewhere -
they can't do it at home -
and then
the drive back home
waiting for Christmas or Labor Day or
Sunday or
something.

down by the wings - charles bukowski

they speak of angels or she
speaks of angels
from a plateglass window overlooking the
Sunset Strip
(she has these visions)
(I don't have these visions)
but maybe angels prefer people with
money
daughters of rich farmers who are dying of
throat cancer in Brazil.
myself - I keep seeing these
wingless creatures of mean story and dismal
intent
and she says
when I defame her
dream:
you are trying to
pull me down
by the wings.

she's going to Europe in the summer -
Greece, Italy, most probably
Paris and she's
taking some of her angels with
her.
not all
but some.
now there's this half-Chinese boy who used to
sleep on fire escapes
the Negro homosexual who plays chess and
recited Shelley at the Sensualist

then there's the one who has real talent with the
brush (Nickey) but who simply can't get
started
somehow and
there's also Sieberling who cries because he
love his mother (actually).

many of these
angels
will leave town and
flow around the
Arch of Triump
to be photographed or
to chase beetles at
9 rue Git-le-Coeur, and
it's going to be a hot and
lonesome summer
for many of us when
the devil walks in and retakes Hollywood
once more.

Overheard conversation...

...waiting to get into an artist talk. Three girls, in designer clothes and designed faces, sat discussing their upcoming dilution of responsibility upon some poor unsuspecting bloke. For this story we'll call them the Three Stupid Boyfriends. Two parts intrigued me enough to write them for later.

"My bridesmaid is the most odd shaped one. I said that if the dress looks decent on you, it will look good on everyone. Some are flat chested and others are pear shaped but she is the oddest by far."

"I told my boyfriend that if I started to look like [my step sister] he was allowed to beat me."

Juju B Solomon - s/t

I've been listening to this record for a few months now. I finally got a copy for WUAG, and this is the review I wrote for the station. First part is my entire history with Juju B, the second part is his past, and the third is a review for the station that is designed to get all those blahcore lovers to play this album.


History of Juju and Myself

I first heard of Juju B when I was at WREK radio in Atlanta. Having a rotation show, I always played what no one else would. I fell in love with "On the Lam" immediately. He had a show for later in the month, so my friend and I gathered courage and went. Courage isn't usually needed for going to shows, except this venue was called "The Banana Hammock." After a weird halal meal of goat bones in chile oil with a side of onions, we spent the better part of an hour driving through a neighborhood looking for the address, but what we found was a nondescript house in a nondescript neighborhood. More courage was needed than we thought. Outside, a scrawny kid was struggling with his equipment. I brought in the amp. Inside was a bizarre dozen of musicians, dropped awkwardly throughout a traditional open air parlor/kitchen area. Three bands later, we were still seated in the parlor, on an earth toned overstuffed love seat, which was only separated from the stage/living room by a mirror and faux African end table. Besides the owners of the house, we were the only ones left. We watched as the scrawny kid quietly plugged in, adjusted the mic, and began to sing about cock blocking with no introduction. It was a religious experience. His delivery was shy, reserved. He never moved more than what was needed to make the notes and his eyes were constantly focused inches above the ground. He thanked us after every song. From then on, I've vowed to get his music out into the ether however possible. He wasn't going to do it himself, and neither was his label.


History of Juju B

Juju B Solomon is actually Benjamin Solomon. A self professed hippie, he moved to India awhile back and attempted to write a novel. Instead, he worked in a textile factory, where he was told to increase production. With pigtails and a purple aura, he constantly had problems communicating with the workers. He never fit in - religiously, culturally, any -ly. He was a dog in a bright red dress. A freak alone. A friend then gave him a Givson guitar. Not Gibson, Givson - the Indian "version" of a Gibson. After cutting his hair and growing out his finger nails, he wandered around Delhi writing these narratives and moping. He came back to the States, came to Atlanta, and is now completely ignored by the critics and fans alike.


The Review

Many of you might be repulsed by the fact that this album has a guy and a guitar and not much more. But don't! Genuinely funny words, genuinely charming vocal inflections, this album is not folk, singer-song writer, local, any of that. It's a collection of stories about a genuinely confused and horny American boy in India with guitar accompaniment. I keep saying genuine, because that's its greatest strength. Released on a label so indie that their head quarters is a run down brick and mortar converted shack in the seedy underbelly of Atlanta, Juju sing talks his way through things you typically don't hear addressed on plastic. The constant feeling is that he never thought any one would hear his songs, so they're savagely honest and, well, genuine. Play all the time.

Jumbling Towers

Over the past couple o' years, a few unwritten rules have been written for indie pop/rock. It's unspeakable, but unmistakable. We expect our underground artists to sound either professionally unprofessional (think Steve Albani), like it's been recorded on a 4 track, or to have a totally clean and polished sheen. Jumbling Towers isn't any of this, it sounds truly unprofessional. It's refreshing. It's four midwestern dudes with four different ideas about music. The vocals are a tongue and cheek British dandy impersonation, with hints of the David Byrne. Drums sound like cheap ass drums, riffs sound like riffs, the bass does some good nearly Joy Division stuff. There's a lot of DIY layering. There's that insufferable Rhodes keyboard and the droning organ. And it all works, together, passingly well. I know nobody knows of this band, but it sounds uncannily like Grape Digging Sharon Fruits. It's not one of the best albums of 2007. It's not one of the greatest albums of all time. It's unassuming, quirky in the most genuine way, indie tunes. Awesomely self released, some real promise in the future. Indie. That's it.

Oh, yea, this was the first draft. Later on I included a bit on the drumming. The drumming is really terrible sounding, cheap and tinny. It keeps this album from greatness. I've been in touch with the band, and they mentioned that it was the only part they didn't record themselves. They hated the sound as well. In other words, in the future, if they get that worked out, they will have an amazing album. Keep Jumbling Towers in mind for the future.

Jose Gonzales - In Our Nature

Rock began from the musings of the poor on the acoustic guitar. Anymore, it seems rock is ending in the same fashion, crawling back towards its roots. A classic story of a rags to riches king dying in exile. Folk, singer song writer, whatever you want to call it, has been descending, slowly, on our station for decades. A smog of crisp quarter and half notes bellow from the smoke stack fingers of the folk guitarist, suffocating the shelves and drowning the DJs.This is no fault of Jose Gonzalez, an Argentinian Swede. These are all expertly crafted, folk inspired, acoustic, singer-song writer tunes with average lyrics. I'm simply tired of expertly crafted, folk inspired, singer-song writer tunes. On any instrument.

Old Time Relijun - Catharsis in Crisis

A swamp of upright bass, dirty delta blues guitar, scary ass screeching saxophone birds manically emerging from the cloudscape, hauntingly powerful Captain Beefheart vocals growled from beyond the grave, drum riffs rhythmically removing your brain: this is an album apart. After 7 of these things, Arrington de Dionyso is starting to get things together. It always works, but on the songs that everything comes together perfectly, it's impossibly catchy and horrifying. And, oddly, a few times, it really reminds me of Television, if Television were a delta blues cover band.

People - Misbegotten Man

You know how people at Panera and Borders always "appreciate" jazz? No one ever admits to something so pedestrian as the verb "to listen".But, with People, I really do appreciate the music. (Some listening also happens.) I appreciate bands still willing to make challenging music. Rock hasn't been dangerous since the Ramones were used to sell Pepsi, maybe even longer. I appreciate how there isn't any art house stuff in rotation. I appreciate how this album sucks by any modern convention yet they still had the balls to not only record it, but to spend the money sending it to radio stations all over the country. Girl singer that moves erratically in and out of tune. Drummer who doesn't stretch or shrink time, he ignores it completely. Incomprehensible 17 syllable words and a a guitar that follows its own trajectory all together. Accepting them on their own terms, this album isn't spectacular. It gets tedious quickly. By the second song, you know all the tricks. By the fifth, you begin to feel dizzy. By the end, your ears start to bleed. But for radio use, I highly recommend playing at least one song a day. They do stand alone quite well, especially alongside a traditional verse-chorus-verse indie pop ditty.

Good Life - Help Wanted Nights

While putting the crunchy vocals of Tim Kasher slightly ahead of brushed drums, Album of the Year wasn’t. Murky, subdued. Vivid and listless. 37 shades of tri-color rotini. Having an actual band, instead of whoever happens to be wandering through Omaha, keeps this album expansive, consistent, and crunchy in all the right ways. It’s like sticking pop songs in the broiler. What’s more spectacular is that this album is nothing more than archetypes and clichés of small town drunks and whores. An abstraction of Tim’s first movie. But he abstracts them so well, that the cheesy parts don’t seem cheesy and the serious parts aren’t taken all too seriously. It keeps everything focused on lodging his wailing and guitar howling and drum drummering deep inside your log cabin mind.

Charlemagne

Down at the Orange Jubilee of Indie Music, on the menu sitting comfortably above Eclectic Noise Band and right below Post-Post-Neo-Contemporary-Post-Punk, you’ll find a nice, tall, refreshing ‘90s College Rock Revival Smoothie. Made from finely aged Dinosaur Jr licks, Pavement vocals, and early REM sensibilities, Carl John’s Charlemagne project goes well with everything. It’s crafted meticulously to make those on the verge of getting their first mortgage to feel the early pangs of nostalgia. If you have wanted to fight the mainstream, be a director to show the world your vision, or have thought that girls are hottest with Jennifer Aniston haircuts and Star Jones sized shirts in the past 15 years, this record is for you. When you are moving into your house and all of your

MV and EE

From the back porch, rain of indeterminate origin hazes down over patched earth. Water pools around the muddied city, skyscrapers of ambling weeds struggling to stay afloat. Concrete relics, yard art no one remembers buying stand alongside forgotten pine trees as the rain keeps falling. From behind you, from the door, wafts must, dirt, dust from the stack of vinyl. Neil Young. Pink Floyd. Moby Grape. As you sit on the porch, wood on wood, smoking hash, watching the rain fall. That is this album. It draws on enough classic rock, reverb and fuzz guitar drones, screeching, and psychedelic wailing while using enough modern era lingo to keep it fresh..

Drug Rug

Tommy Allen and Sarah Cronin met in a bar, fell in love, exchanged demo tapes. You know how this works. Forming Drug Rug, inviting some friends along the way, they ambled through this album, happily indulgent in their new relationship. Really, though, I wish they would have saved the music for later, because someone needs to punch Sarah Cronin in the face. This is a solid '60s psychedelic pop sound a la the Byrds meets modern indie twee sensibilities in a lo fi recording studio kind of album. Think chicken jello, vietnam, and plastics - along with a whole lot of hash. Except on the songs where Sarah Cronin gets out of control.